Ether
by iiskaa
Summary: Their subordinates have no idea what goes on between them behind closed doors. Megatron/Soundwave/Starscream. Slash, voyeurism.


Notes: Written as an experiment in unfocalized 3rd person POV. More on my LJ.

Disclaimer: not mine

--

A message meant for two crackles over private comm lines, "Tonight. Twenty one hundred joors." Words stripped of inflection by a full room's worth of magnetic interference, no further instruction, but the communication is understood.

Megatron does not need to look up from the datapad balanced on his knee, doesn't pause in the report he's reading to spare a glance toward either Air Commander – wing's-breadth of silver-white and graphite features in a corner of the room, leaning over Ramjet's shoulder at his work station while both of them look intently at computer renderings of aerial maneuvers – or Communications Officer, still and removed as ever, jacked into his console, to all appearances deeply engrossed in signal analysis. They, in turn, do not openly acknowledge the message's receipt.

Activity in the command center continues uninterrupted.

If anyone notices the slight upward twitch of Starscream's lips, or how Soundwave's mask tips briefly toward the jet, or that Megatron's optics are unfocused on the datapad, they say nothing. No one stops to gossip. No one pauses in his work.

--

Light bleeds through a large bay of windows, rendering the quarters in patchwork blue and twisting, moody shadows. It's night on the Pacific surface, and fathoms below, the sea floor would be black but for the glow cast from other windows, constellations of them smeared across the shell of the Nemesis II.

Starscream is on his back, splayed across a communications terminal, the computer protesting in beeps and squeals as his fingers dig into the keys. Wings hitch and tremble as his back scrapes across the monitor. He's silent for once, mouth rounded open in a rictus of concession, all come-fuck-me colors and neediness, glowing in the dark.

The silence is short-lived, as Soundwave's hands map out canopy and wings, tearing a gasp from Starscream's vocalizer.

Megatron, standing slouched half against the wall of blue beyond the window, half against a strut in the bulkhead, makes a small, approving sound. He's free of the weight of stellar mass potential – his fusion is canon discarded, as are Starscream's null rays, as is Soundwave's photon gun. One black hand drifts from thigh to face and back again as he watches his seconds move together. Soundwave is fingering Starscream's spoilers, Starscream twitching as too-thick digits pluck at the flaps, push beneath them. They brush something there and Starscream arches off the console, optics flaring and armor squealing against armor as he bucks into Soundwave's chassis, as canopy scrapes cassette tray and thighs clench around hips.

"That's good. Keep doing that," Megatron rumbles, pit-fighter's accent a deep rasp of metal. He looks on with half-shuttered optics, stroking a panel on his lower torso.

Soundwave pushes Starscream back against the console, wrists slammed to either side of his head. He grips them hard enough to hurt, and the unspoken order is clear – when he releases the Seeker's wrists, Starscream leaves them where they've been placed. Then, pinning Starscream by one wing, he smooths a hand down the other's surface, and finding the spoiler, again curls his fingers over the edge.

"Harder." The voice is Megatron's, and Soundwave hastens to obey it. Pulling the spoiler as far as it will go without breaking, holding it open while he scrapes the undersurface of the flap.

Starscream yowls, drawing a low moan from Megatron and a warning squeeze from Soundwave before the fingers release his spoiler and move down his fuselage. They reach his hip, then dip between his legs, and Starscream's intakes suddenly heave.

"No," he murmurs, corner of his lips curved into the barest hint of a smile. Tilting his head back and to one side, revealing a length of throat, the fuel lines pulsing beneath dark, flexible plating. This is for Megatron, who draws in a shuddering breath, fingers twitching against his thighs. A moment's hesitation before Starscream brings his hands back up to push at Soundwave's shoulders. "N-no, don't." No fear backing the words, no strength in the push, and Soundwave translates his meaning easily enough.

He wrenches the hands from his shoulders, grabs Starscream's chin and roughly forces his face back around. Starscream's optics have gone dim, sure sign of arousal to match the spark behind Soundwave's visor, or his circuits' deep, polyphonic hum. Soundwave traces the shape of Starscream's mouth, pushes a pair of fingers past willingly parted lips. He isn't gentle about it, but still, incoherent sounds escape Starscream's vocalizer as he sucks on Soundwave's fingers, rolling his glossa around them. From the side of the room from which Megatron is watching, the sound of cooling fans stuttering to life.

Megatron has shifted away from the window and blends almost seamlessly into the dark, against the wall. He has an armor panel unlatched, and he's circling a finger wet from his own mouth around a port, shivering, but his optics, narrowed to slits now, never waver from his lieutenants. The next instruction is on the tip of his glossa, but held in while he waits to see what his third-in-command has in mind to do.

Soundwave lifts one long silver thigh from around his waist and yanks on it so Starscream's aft slides down the console, over the keys and right to the very edge. Yelping at the unexpected loss of balance, Starscream catches himself on his elbows, only narrowly avoiding cracking the screen with the back of his head. His scrabbling for purchase on the console ends abruptly when Soundwave pulls again on leg and wing, lifting him off the surface and barely setting him down on his feet before propelling him, pitching and stumbling, toward the berth set against the opposite wall.

There's a low-slung chair beside it. Megatron pushes himself from the bulkhead and lurches for it, still touching himself. Bracing one hand on the backrest while moving the other over sensor bundles and armor seams in short jerks, he collapses into the chair in a splayed-legged straddle that makes its steel and tension cable framework groan.

Soundwave is thrumming, static and feedback of suppressed moans hissing from his vocalizer as Starscream's glossa flicks against his torso armor, Soundwave's hands on Starscream's helmet, guiding him. Starscream's clasp Soundwave around the back of his thighs, brush up over his aft. Movement off to the side of the berth, and Megatron's voice cuts in again.

"Soundwave."

The mech turns his visored face to where Megatron is sitting, black thumb tracing a seam high up on an ash-white leg. Huffing short, strained intakes of air, bleeding arousal, Megatron lifts the hand from his thigh, makes a gesture, and Soundwave understands. He lets go of Starscream's helmet, and pulls the hands away from his skidplate, and when Starscream rocks backward to look up into his darkened visor with question in his optics, he shoves the Seeker down on the berth and moves to hover over him, running a hand up his side, straddling a leg.

He syncs his field to Starscream's, trembling. Impatient for release, he's more forceful than he needs to be. Starscream reaches up and clings to him, driven so hard and so quickly into overload that he's keening, fingers raking Soundwave's shoulders, and he follows almost immediately.

Starscream's whimpers, and Soundwave's tight, drawn-out moan do it for Megatron. He rides the backwash thrown off by both their fields as it rips across his sensors, electron pin pricks and strange particle constellations, optics locked on silverflash and bottom-of-the-Pacific blue.

--

Megatron is the first to recover. He onlines still sprawled in the chair he'd collapsed into and immediately looks up, at the berth and the forms of his lieutenants – Soundwave, on his back, head cradled on one arm, the other thrown wide across the berth. Starscream, turned as much on one side as he can, with his wings, and one leg hooked over Soundwave's, clingy even in recharge.

The moment is filament-fragile. He heaves himself up and moves toward the berth, compelled to touch for all that he doesn't want to disturb them.

Two fingers follow the stripe on Starscream's wing, making the dark-faced Seeker twitch and mumble in his sleep. A glint of light behind the other's visor – Soundwave is awake, watching him silently.

Soundwave carefully shifts Starscream from his shoulder and lifts himself up on one elbow, leaning over the still-offline chassis, a half-way motion that Megatron completes. He turns Soundwave's face toward him and touches his lips to the mask. Soundwave reaches up to remove it, tries to pull back, but Megatron moves his hand away, holds him there.

Starscream stirs between them, legs still tangled with Soundwave's. He sits up shakily, all his weight on one hip and twisting around to see them, stretches an unsteady hand to Megatron, who catches it, and drags it forward, into the kiss.


End file.
